Previously on Dvensk…

My filtered life

I’m like a bird

Last day at work, first days at home

Today was my last day at work. (Before Christmas, I mean. I am planning to return.) I was the last one holding the fort, with my colleague already on winter holiday in Sweden, our student assistant not working afternoons, and half of the co-workers in the shared office spaced gone. The remaining ones in the room next to me stuck out their head in the early afternoon, calling: “Fika?”. We have trained them well, those Germans. (#thosegermans is a fun new hashtag I found, established by American Kate living in Germany. You’re welcome and have fun on Twitter.)

This week, we obtained new chairs. Since then, I told my colleague three times a day how much I love them. She thinks they look like chairs in the Star Trek/Wars Bridge. I call them the Chefsessel (executive chair).

These past days, I have devoted most of my awake time to unpacking my apartment. When you have been away from your stuff for a while, you love it all the more. I guess it is like furniture lent: you fast on your things a while and then you appreciate them twice as much.

I really loved my former apartment, it was excellent in many ways. So I am relieved to find that I have at least not downgraded with the new one. Actually, I love it more every day: when I go into the relatively newly tiled bathroom, marvel at the new kitchen faucet (only the faucet is new, everything else I brought – but what a difference a faucet can make!), or step into the large living room with its bank of windows and the double wing door. My friend Maike and I quickly named the room the Salon. “A salon is a gathering of people under the roof of an inspiring host, held partly to amuse one another and partly to refine the taste and increase the knowledge of the participants through conversation” – you understand the level of ambition for the Domizil Lux. (You will understand the name when you come to visit.)

But now I am off to North Germany and Sweden for Christmas and New Year. Germany and even Sweden is experiencing record highs in temperatures, people walk around in ballerinas the day before Christmas, and in Sälen, where I’ll be in late December, they predict zero degrees. That’s spring…!